Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [85]
Charlotte knew before she spoke. “That you come, too.” She smiled wryly. “Of course. Do you know the Waybournes?”
Emily sighed. “No.”
Charlotte felt her heart sink.
“But I’m sure Aunt Vespasia does, or knows someone else who does. Society is really very small, you know.”
Charlotte remembered George’s Great-Aunt Vespasia with a tingle of pleasure. She stood up from the table.
“Then we’d better go and see her,” she said enthusiastically. She’ll be bound to help us when she knows why.”
Emily also stood up. “Are you going to tell her this tutor is innocent?” she asked doubtfully.
Charlotte hesitated. She needed the help desperately, and Aunt Vespasia might be disinclined to intrude herself into a grieving family, bringing two inquisitive sisters to uncover ugly secrets, unless she believed gross injustice was about to be done. On the other hand, when Charlotte recalled Aunt Vespasia, she realized that lying to her would be impossible, and worse than pointless.
“No.” She shook her head. “No, I’ll tell her there may be a gross injustice done, that’s all. She’ll mind about that.”
“I wouldn’t guarantee her loving truth for its own sake,” Emily replied. “She’ll be able to see all its disadvantages too. She’s extremely practical, you know.” She smiled and rang the bell at last, to permit Gwenneth to clear the table. “But then, of course, she would hardly have survived in society for seventy years if she were not. Do you want to borrow a decent dress? I suppose we’ll go calling immediately, if it can be arranged. There’s hardly time to lose. And, by the way, you’d better let me explain all this to Aunt Vespasia. You’ll let all sorts of things slip and shock her out of her senses. People like her don’t know about your disgusting rookeries and your boy prostitutes with their diseases and perversions. You were never any good at saying anything without saying everything else at the same time.” She led the way to the door and out into the hall, practically falling over Gwenneth, who was balanced against the door with a tray in her hand. Emily ignored her and swept across to the stairs.
“I’ve got a dark red dress that would probably look better on you than it does on me anyway. The color is too hard for me—makes me look sallow.”
Charlotte did not bother to argue, either over the dress or the insult to her tact; she could not afford to, and Emily was probably right.
The red dress was extremely flattering, rather too much so for someone proposing to call on the recently bereaved. Emily looked her up and down with her mouth pursed, but Charlotte was too pleased with her reflection in the glass to consider changing it; she had not looked so dashing since she had spent that unspeakable evening in the music hall—an incident she profoundly hoped Emily had forgotten.
“No,” she said firmly before Emily spoke. “They are in mourning, but I am not. Anyway, if we let them know that we know they are, then we can hardly go at all! I can wear a black hat and gloves—that will be enough to tone it down. Now you had better get dressed, or we shall have wasted half the morning. We don’t want to find Aunt Vespasia already gone out when we get there!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Emily snapped. “She’s seventy-four! She doesn’t go calling on people at this hour! Have you forgotten all your breeding?”
But when they arrived at Great-Aunt Vespasia’s house they were informed that Lady Cumming-Gould had been up for some considerable time, and had already received a caller that morning; the maid would have to see whether she was available to receive Lady Ashworth and her sister. They were invited to wait in a morning room fragrant with the earthy smell of a bowl of chrysanthemums, reflected in gold-edged French cheval glasses and echoed in a most unusual Chinese silk embroidery on the wall. They were both drawn to admire the embroidery in the minutes left them.
Vespasia Cumming-Gould threw open the doors and came in. She was exactly as Charlotte had remembered